On the relevance of GIKS instability of charged N=4 SYM plasma

Alex Buchel

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arXiv · 2502.11354

On the relevance of GIKS instability of charged N=4 SYM plasma

Alex Buchel

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Abstract

Recently Gladden, Ivo, Kovtun, and Starinets (GIKS) identified a novel instability of ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma with a diagonal $U(1)$ $R$-symmetry chemical potential. Since ${\cal N}=4$ SYM plasma has $R$-charged matter fields, it might suffer from the standard superconducting instability. We show that while the superconducting instability is indeed present, it happens at a lower critical temperature compare to that of the GIKS instability.

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Alex Buchel. 2025-02-17. On the relevance of GIKS instability of charged N=4 SYM plasma. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11354

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